I admin the.coolest.zone, the coolest site on the net for online social engagement.

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I always thought this was my ADHD talking, but from some googling… It could be this as well, or instead of. I’m definitely very monotropic and I also recognize the symptoms of Pathological Demand Avoidance in myself.

    Unfortunately, at work I manage three different tracks which each have their own roadmaps and deadlines, so constantly shifting attention is required. It’s taken a decade of practice to get where I am – forcing my body and my brain past perceived obstacles and discomfort. It’s possible to train your brain out of certain desire paths with enough effort, but it’s not easy, and I wouldn’t say I’m cured to any measure. I’m just better at managing my symptoms and getting things done than I used to be.

    I hate to say “it’s a bootstrap thing” but frankly there’s no magic cure, only increasingly difficult iterative steps that you achieve through a ton of practice. I do hope my neurodivergent compatriots here have been able to find jobs that work with their unique skills and brain structures, rather than against as I have found myself.





  • So this is actually an interesting term. Looking it up from Wikipedia…

    The term “sideload” was coined in the late 1990s by online storage service i-drive as an alternative means of transferring and storing computer files virtually instead of physically. In 2000, i-drive applied for a trademark on the term. Rather than initiating a traditional file “download” from a website or FTP site to their computer, a user could perform a “sideload” and have the file transferred directly into their personal storage area on the service.

    The advent of portable MP3 players in the late 1990s brought sideloading to the masses, even if the term was not widely adopted. Users would download content to their PCs and sideload it to their players.

    So as applied to phones it originally meant a particular type of download and install - rather than installing directly to your phone from an app store, you have somehow obtained the file on your PC, transferred the file to your phone, and then installed it. In that context, downloading an APK directly to your phone and installing it would not be sideloading.

    However, semantics have shifted somewhat and now it’s used generally to refer to any install that isn’t directly from an app store of some kind, and requires downloading an actual package file and then installing it.


  • I think this is mostly what you want, but as far as I can find online (and I’ll test it again later today) it no longer shows traffic warnings and your current speed like the destination maps does. I think it used to, though, which is what’s annoying about this whole situation.

    I actually lost this feature for a while - it used to be under the hamburger ≡ menu as “Just Drive” and then the hamburger menu disappeared, and I’ve just recently found it again as a widget.

    So, yeah, Google kills all good things and I’m sure it won’t last for much longer, but it’s nice in the meantime.






  • A fascinating take on it. I’m still wary about Threads interoperating with the rest of the Fediverse, and how that may change the culture as well as the system over time (Meta would have the power and money to throw around regarding changes to ActivityPub implementation), but I also see it similar to email. And I’ve spoken about this before to the point I sound like a broken record …

    But people understand the basics of email. They understand they can sign up for a Gmail account and send an email to anyone else. Maybe Threads will be our Gmail here, and introduce people into the idea of a wider open social media concept in a more familiar way to them, and they can branch out as needed or just choose to stay on Threads.

    In any case, any given instance can choose to block Threads if they so choose.


  • Re: this section:

    As a technical writer, you should stay close to the teams whose work you are documenting. Listen out for any code, SDK, or product changes that may require action. When you hear that a tool may be deprecated, start communicating.

    It just assumes that nobody will ever proactively reach out to the technical writer about deprecations, which is entirely true in practice, but just feels so sad to acknowledge. Please keep your content and document management team(s) in the loop!


  • @ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone Let me know if you need rehab.

    But seriously… yeah, I get it. Especially this part about the workplace:

    Nevertheless, [addicted programmers] can also pose significant risks, especially because they frequently deviate from the planned course. They follow their own agenda, introducing challenges where none were necessary, or dedicating hours to minor, tangential aspects of a project. In the process, they diverge from the project plan, programming what they believe is necessary rather than what the project itself requires.

    I have been that person before, and now I’m in a position where I have to keep those folks on a tight leash and remind them “our goal is to deliver a product right now, and we can enhance it in future sprints. Let’s just focus on what our primary goal was right now.” It’s easy to fall down rabbit holes, and that’s where having proper planning and a ticketing system to backlog and prioritize future enhancements is so critical.


  • people working at the San Francisco-based startup “look down on what they consider legacy companies” and “see themselves as innovators who are radically changing the world.”

    With the rumors that the ethics board was worried about OpenAI and Altman moving too fast to truly consider ethics… This checks out. Startups are truly a different beast to larger “legacy companies”, who move slower because they have checks and balances and a reputation to maintain.

    I do think Microsoft would have given them a lot of leeway though, given the gold mine they were about to be sitting on. Staying at the front of the copilot race is critically important right now, and as Microsoft continues to move all its Office 365 services to the web and cross-connect them, it’s even more important for them to have a copilot for Enterprise clients that spans and can pull data from all those services.


  • Ok, so I use Gboard and it doesn’t seem to do that for me, it leaves existing spaces alone. Here are my settings:

    Under Text Correction I have enabled:

    • Show suggestion strip
    • Auto correction
    • Auto capitalization
    • Double space period
    • Proofread

    Everything else is disabled, so maybe try toggling things off and on and seeing whether the behavior changes?

    I also have two keyboards I switch between: English (US) and हिन्दी . I’m unsure whether having multiple language keyboards changes how the base functionality works.



  • As we’ve been tracking, Google is now beginning to roll out “Profile discovery” in Messages for Android to establish your name and photo across the RCS app and others.

    This is part of “Profile discovery,” which appears in Messages Settings > Advanced once rolled out to your phone. It is a Google Account-level setting that you can turn on/off. Google notes what phone number is associated with your name and profile image, with the ability to change things.

    Ok, so good things:

    • I’m glad it’s not auto-pulling from your Google profile, because you may not want that data actually visible to everyone who has your phone number.
    • I guess it makes it more like iMessage which is cool (?)

    Thoughts:

    • So our text messages (which, I know RCS technically isn’t but for all intents and purposes it is a replacement and serves the same purpose) are becoming more chat-like.
    • At the same time, Google has made Google Chat more like Messages, visually.
    • If the intent is to eventually combine the two, the advantage is that Google has a stronger and more unified messaging platform, but the downside is Google’s RCS implementation is even more customized to the point it’s harder for others to hop on.
    • If the intent is not to combine the two, I don’t see why making them look almost identical and yet having two separate apps is at all a good thing for Google. Their user base remains fragmented.

    Hopefully this is some secret ongoing messaging solution cleanup plan by Google. I won’t hold my breath, but a small part of me still longs for the return of a Hangouts-esque combined system.


  • Azure AD is now Entra ID. Please do not deadname the Microsoft cloud offering (even if we all think it chose kind of a dumb sounding new name 🤫).

    And Microsoft is heavily pushing their cloud services of course, but you can still set up on-prem AD as an option as well as other on-prem services.

    It’s just that all their cross service interoperability stuff won’t work as well if it’s not all in the cloud. Like, all their stuff is designed to work together in the cloud and keep you entrenched in the ecosystem, like any company I guess, except I actually like using Teams/Office/SharePoint combo, it’s executed well.