Thord D. Hedengren

ℹ️ This is an archived legacy site for link purposes only.

Month: May 2015

  • Jag testar svenska Siri på Apple Watch

    Hårig arm och klingande skånska stundar när jag testar svenska Siri på Apple Watch åt Macworld.

  • Repeating oneself

    Warren Ellis, while writing about his speaking engagements, points out one of the reasons I’m not speaking at conferences as much anymore:

    But, more to the point, I’m starting to be that guy who shows up and pretty much says the same things as last time. Sometimes by request, to be sure, but sometimes because I don’t have a lot of time and I’m still stuck on the same themes and I just end up talking about the same stuff.

  • The logical next step for keyboards

    MG Siegler, mirroring my own thoughts:

    I believe we’ll all be typing on Force Touch glass keyboards one day in the not-too-distance future.

  • This town relies on Twitter

    Jun, a Spanish town of 3,500 people, is using Twitter for communication with its citizens.

    The speediest time for a problem to be resolved so far is three and a half minutes, from a resident tweeting about a faulty streetlamp to it being replaced by the electrician, with a photo posted online. “The employees, whose work was previously not appreciated, now take pride in achieving their tasks,” Rodriguez Salas says. “It brings residents closer to the administration at the same time.”

    Fascinating.

  • Don't forget the person driving your Uber cab

    Emily Guendelsberger went undercover as an Uber driver in Philadelphia:

    Driving for UberX isn’t the worst-paying job I’ve ever had. I made less scooping ice cream as a 15-year-old, if you don’t adjust for inflation. If I worked 10 hours a day, six days a week with one week off, I’d net almost $30,000 a year before taxes.

    But if I wanted to net that $90,000 a year figure that so many passengers asked about, I would only have to work, let’s see …

    27 hours a day, 365 days a year.

    There’s been a lot of stories like this the past few months. It’s easy to take a stand for or against the likes of Uber of Lyft, but in the process you’re forgetting the people making very little money while you feel like you have “your own private driver”. As is so often the case, someone worse off is working hard, while rich assholes entrepreneurs are reaping the benefit. That doesn’t mean I think you should boycott Uber or Lyft, it just means that there’s more to these services, and the problems around them, than meets the eye.

  • The end of Minimal Mac

    Patrick Rhone, wrapping up Minimal Mac:

    This is the final post on Minimal Mac. This project contains what I believe in when it comes to a mindful and intentional approach to technology. After nearly 2,500 posts, I have nothing more to add to what has already been said. As I wrote in my book enough, saying no is actually saying yes to other things. It’s time to say “no” to this project so that I can say “yes” to others (or, in some cases, fully commit to agreements already made).

    Good for you, and thanks for all the beautiful words.

  • How hard is it to find a dark wrist anyway

    Quartz is treading on thin ice with this piece, claiming that the Apple Watch might not work as well on dark skin, as well as on tattoos.

    While those with tattooed wrists may experience some issues, there’s also the possibility that the watch will not work as intended for a much larger group of potential watch buyers: those with darker skin. LeBoeuf says that green light is more likely to be absorbed by the skin of people with higher melanin content. Even if the sensors work when a person is sitting down, the darker their skin is, the less likely the sensors are to capture data when the person is moving. “The signal to noise ratio will be much lower for people having higher melanin content,” LeBoeuf says.

    This is nothing but poor reporting on Quartz behalf. They claim that a person with tattoos tried the Apple Watch’s heart rate feature but it only worked one time out of five. Fine, the information about the test and the utter lack of detail aside, it’s at least something grounded in reality. The big problem is that the publication fail to do the same test on a person of dark skin, instead reporting the issue as truth. How hard is it to find a person with dark skin, really? Also, how likely is it that no one with access to the Apple Watch at Apple has dark skin? Unlikely, I’d wager, but I don’t know, nor does Quartz according to the story.

    The whole piece is rubbish, built on someone saying something, rather than actual tests and reporting. Frankly, I’m surprised to see that this hasn’t been pulled altogether. Criticize all you want, point out flaws, but back it up with tests.