visiting the wood shop for a few hours, then I'll begin what has become my New Year's Day tradition: updating https://simpleoptout.com with changes to 100+ privacy policies.
if anyone wants to help visit a zillion privacy policies, find in the page for "third-party" and "opt-out" (with hyphens, spaces, or no separator…), and update https://github.com/troy/simpleoptout, DM me or send a pull request 😀
from @sfchronicle: "Alameda County admits tallying error in ranked-choice voting, flips one result and raises big questions"
the incorrect "winner" has already been certified as the winner. nobody knows what happens now.
more: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Alameda-County-admits-tallying-error-in-17682520.php , https://oaklandside.org/2022/12/28/alameda-county-registrar-miscounted-ballots-oakland-election-2022/
my quick Hacker News answer to "Why don't more services offer a 'pay as you go' pricing model? What are the downsides of this from the business perspective?"
here's what a network of fake Google Maps business locations looks like.
I stumbled across roughly 50 places in WA and NC, all with a generic SEO'd product name as the business name. no reviews, just a Web site.
and… my Maps Contributions pane after removing ~50 places.
@rchase a Sign Up page that doesn't depend on Mastodon-specific knowledge: https://mas.to/@troyd/109535776527431757
any of my fellow armchair economists looking to change careers? GiveWell is hiring a senior researcher: https://www.givewell.org/about/jobs/senior-researcher (remote, US timezones).
as a professional over-thinker, I'd gladly work here:
if Apple had acquired the iPad app Concepts and released it as Freeform, users would still be talking about it.
I started using Concepts to sketch wood products, then clay. it's got the best of vector tools, like infinite zoom, infinite canvas, and stroke-level edits. it's no harder to use than any bitmap drawing tool.
https://concepts.app/en/ , https://youtu.be/LqhyWSPukM4?t=160
Half of every Mastodon intro is spent on choosing a server.
Can we make it easier, so more visitors become users? Imagine:
1. On JoinMastodon.org, a Sign Up page asks for the user's preferred username.
2. The page lists instant-signup servers. Servers with this username available are first, highlighted.
Each server row shows high-level ToS & 1-line summary.
Bonus: Geocode client & highlight in-country servers.
3. User clicks through to a server's signup page.
Thoughts?
bored this afternoon? X-Plane 12 moved from beta to release today.
the free demo allows 15 minutes per flight, which is enough to take off, do a low-altitude pass between buildings, and crash (er, land…): https://www.x-plane.com/desktop/try-it/
the in-app intro covers taking off pretty well: increase throttle (F2) then slowly pull the yoke (mouse). no need to adjust trim.
when you tire of crashing, here's landing in a nutshell: https://www.x-plane.com/manuals/desktop/#landing
hi! if you're reading this #introduction, then I should try to make myself useful 🙂
so, here's some topics that people have asked me about:
• choosing a mattress
• turning a kitchen island into a 1m² ceramic studio (#handbuilding)
• making fitness fun. 👍 VR boxing
• privacy (https://simpleoptout.com/)
• designing products (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252404401)
• Seattle's best sandwiches
• "bootstrapped" businesses (https://troy.yort.com/papertrail-joins-solarwinds-and-accelerates-growth/)
• safe woodworking (http://sawsafely.org/)
DMs welcome