Stones Turned 2021-06-13

2021-06-13

I learned a bunch this week and feel somewhat happy with how I used my time.

The idea that “FLoC IDs are an additional dimension of how you resolve identity is definitely true,” said Desai. He said he expects identity tech and ad tech providers to incorporate FLoC IDs as another signal they might use to help resolve identity or to inform what companies know about people they already have identifiable profiles on. “As FLoC IDs start to come into the ID graph, you can associate those with those profiles,” he said.

and later…

“Chrome is going to be presenting this FLoC ID to every site that I visit the first time that I visit them,” said Cyphers. “Without doing anything else, the first time you’re seen by [a website or ad system] they’re going to have this little package of information about you.”

Beware of tight feedback loops started as an interesting read but ended without much actionable information. I took a few notes but it’s mostly soft ideas like…

Creativity is a function of being well-read and having exposed to a variety of stimuli. Reading different sorts of books, blogs, novels, and primers will help. Exploring new places and talking with different people also fills us with more concepts and ideas to draw from.

We gain slack by being emotionally, physically, socially, and financially secure. This is a long-term project. Slack may be the most difficult factor to improve, because it is a reflection of our life circumstances. That said, discarding low priority tasks and chores can free up time and mental energy.

I decided to look at the Obsidian plugin security. I’m still not convinced Obsidian is the right tool for me, simply because there’s no iOS app and even seeing the features requires a cult initiation.

A YouTube video referenced Displate for wall art and I like the designs.

I spent some time trying to figure out how to make iTerm2 work better with Alfred. It was unproductive after five minutes so I gave up.

I read How To Win At Risk By Using Systems Thinking. It was an interesting idea even though I haven’t played the game of Risk in 30 years. I do think that “systems thinking” is overused in the wrong contexts. In this case it seems like a good model.

Limiting Factor: Systems collapse if the growth force is allowed to run unchecked. At a certain point, the system hits a limiting factor. In the bathtub example, the limiting factor is the desired level of water in the tub. You can always spot the limiting factors in a system by looking at the (1) carrying capacities of the stocks or (2) the goals of the players in the system.

VSCode just got a super power for remote repositories.

The new Remote Repositories extension, published by GitHub, makes the experience of opening source code repositories in VS Code instant and safe. With this, you can quickly browse, search, edit, and commit to any remote GitHub repository (and soon, Azure Repos) directly from within VS Code, no clone necessary!

VSCode regularly impresses me and I still prefer it over most other code editors.

I learned a bit about properly harvesting oregano, lettuce, and basil.

Dang, FarCry 6 looks good. I’ve half-played most of the series and will likely half-play this installment.

I skimmed a very long story of a likely very terrible person. I’m not sure how I feel about using my time to read it. Maybe sad.

I looked into YubiKey for 2FA instead of software authenticators and SMS. I’m not yet convinced that it would make me more secure but I’m not done reading about it. Smart people seem to think these are a good idea.

I learned about Jesus H. Christ and now realize how weird language is.

Mostly I spent my free time trying to understand how Anaconda (and Miniconda) work because I severly broke some of my Python and Jupyter workflows this week. It’s all fixed now and I’ll probably write more about it later.