Happy New Year everyone! It’s time to be serious for a minute. If you’re a left leaning person, I think it’s safe to say the next 4 years are going to be something that isn’t fun to deal with. The first Trump administration had significant authoritarian tendencies, and the second will likely be even worse given the types of people he has nominated to run the DOJ and how they are attempting to weaponize the civilian agencies to crack down on protests / speech. If you are a left leaning person, and by that I mean someone who could be deemed a “radical” / antifascist, you should start thinking about your digital hygiene immediately before it’s too late.
There’s a lot of tools you can use that are alternatives to existing systems / needs. You do not have to use these tools. Privacy / security is a right, but I also believe it is a choice with compromises along the way. You do not have to make the same choices I have, and you should judge each …
When the PlayStation 5 launched in 2020, I was genuinely excited. Maybe it was because it felt like Sony was trying to do something unique in the space with its controller and design. Perhaps it was because the Xbox being released along side it felt more like an iterative upgrade to the One X I already owned, and the PS5 would be a large jump from the launch PS4 I was still playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake on. Regardless I bided my time and went through many online checkouts before I received my PS5 sometime around March 2021. I loved my PS5 at the time. Even when I bought a Series X I still preferred the premium feel and design of the PS5, especially its brilliantly designed new controller. However, take that new UI away and the PS5 is just a nice remix of the PS4.
The thing that’s different about this generation compared to previous ones is that they’re still making PS4 games. The PS5 Pro already came out, it’s 4 years since the original PS5 launched, and most games still also come out …
With the decline of the website FKA Twitter, there’s been a rise in federated social platforms. In short, the idea of these platforms is that you can follow people from different sites and have one place you see your content. E.g. follow your facebook friends on Twitter, see Instagram reels in your TikTok, etc. A follow up idea is that there are networks like Mastodon / BlueSky, platforms that are free / open source, and allow anyone to run servers that host smaller micro communities. If you open Mastodon, you’ll notice that while most people have a username that ends in @mastodon.social, some have others! Mine is @evanhirsh@hachyderm.io, a mastodon instance focused more on Software Engineering. Hachyderm is a free instance of Mastodon, and makes all its money off donations. This is great when it works, but it doesn’t always work.
Social networks are already an unprofitable business within the framework of capitalism. You have to host text, photos, and videos in perpetuity for all your …
I think if you offered me the choice to be more immersed into a computer at any point in my life, I’d probably ask where I could sign up and how. I spent years dreaming about future more immersive computing experiences, where the computer / digital world can replace and surround my physical one almost exclusively. I am doing much better now and don’t think this way anymore haha, but all this to say the Apple Vision Pro was everything I ever wanted in a computer. To an extent it still is. I remain one of the few users actually putting the device on most weeks, if only to watch TV. As much as I adore my Vision Pro, almost seven months into ownership I have found it is not the life changing device I wanted it to be. The Meta Ray-Bans are though.
I received a pair of Meta Ray-Bans back in April as a gift from my dad. He works in construction as a consultant, and a contractor he works with gave him a pair. He didn’t really have much use for this, so he gave them to me (after I asked lol). I …
Last weekend I went to the Seattle Apple Store in the University Village to pick up my Apple Vision Pro. I have waited for this device since the first rumors of the project sprung up years ago. Those rumors, along with Meta (then Facebook’s) purchase of Oculus, and the eventual release Meta’s infinite office demo made it incredibly easy for anyone to understand the vision of what the long term vision both companies were. A spatial computer, an infinite canvas free of the confines of a screen. The Apple Vision Pro, while by no means perfect, is the closest we have come to realizing this future so far. To me it feels almost like the dream device I have been waiting my entire life for, one that brings the experience of a computer out into the real world. Every morning I wake up, having just finished a dream, and the headset somehow doesn’t disappear from my reality. It feels like a device that shouldn’t exist, and yet it is in my life at …
I believe that outside of essential human rights (food, water, healthcare, housing, communications, etc) art is the most fundamental and important aspect of life. I have the upmost resect for artists, writers, illustrators, filmmakers, game designers, etc, and I believe that they create the context that helps us find meaning in life. I can’t imagine my life without the art they create, as it gives it flavor and meaning and helps me explore both myself and the world. I love films, watch a bit of television, listen to a lot of music, and play / collect a ton of games. In addition, artists surrounded me all my life. My roommates in college were film students, my best friends from high school are animators, my father is a painter and a writer, and for most of my childhood I was an amateur video editor before anything else (even programming!), working in Final Cut Pro and making my own home videos.
I felt this disclosure was important to write, because I believe there is a rightfully earned …
When I started this blog off, one of the lists I wrote was of the tech that made my 2022. It was an incredibly fun and exciting year for me as both a gadget lover and a technophile, with a ton of interesting ideas about how we use both hardware and software. Since I wrote that post I purchased yet another Studio Display (for when I work remotely from my mother’s house), have defaulted to using Arc for almost all my browsing needs and eagerly await both the Windows / iPad app, formatted my MacBook due to the crust of a 8+ year disk image that predated the M1, and sold my Steam Deck to my cousin (incredible hardware, just wasn’t tailored to my needs and couldn’t replace my OLED Switch). Regardless, 2022 was an incredible year for tech in general, and with the LLM boom which started little over a year ago I was expecting incredible things from 2023. Unfortunately this didn’t materialize. Whether it was due to the industry wide layoffs that happened at the start of the year or the economic …
For the past couple of months, we’ve started to see a new wave of AI hardware products released into the world. Meta’s new smart glasses, the humane AI pin, and better writers than I have already commented on these things, but as always, I have thoughts.
First, I believe that AI wearables have an actual market. I think both the Meta / Humane products are trending towards this idea of an invisible computer that eliminates the need for a phone in your pocket all the time, and this is something I’d personally really enjoy. I find myself really wanting both of these products, although I will probably only purchase the Meta glasses, if only just to get a pair of transitional lenses with Bluetooth headphones built in. Although the Humane product is closer to what I’d want in terms of functionality, it’s explicitly designed as a complete phone replacement. It uses a separate cellular subscription without number sharing like the Palm phone / Apple Watch, and has …
I did it again; it’s been a few months since my last post. I promise there’s a reason for this, and his photo is at the end of this post. Also, this post will be spoiling Spider-Man 2 on PS5, so do not read this unless you’re into that.
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Anyways, I have been playing Spider-Man 2 on my PS5, and I just finished the main story, so I figured it’s time to share my thoughts. I think this is a fantastic tech demo for the PS5, but to me it lacked the narrative cohesion and dedication to the character of the previous entries in the series. I also found myself enjoying it quite a bit less than the previous Spider-Man games, mostly due to the changes in the combat that de emphasize Spidey’s acrobatics for insane lightning / robot powers. This is not to suggest that the combat in the previous games was necessarily complex, but the original PS4 game, in particular, focused on immersing you in the experience of being Spider-Man while fighting enemies. This sequel to its …
I’ve been working on a much larger post for the past few months that’s an in-depth analysis of a game I have been playing, but I had some thoughts on another subject meanwhile that I figured I’d jot down in between builds.
Recently, I have fallen off PC gaming. I started my life playing games on computers as I didn’t have access to a gaming console like my friends, and it became a core part of how I interfaced with the medium until I was almost a teenager. For me, the cost benefit analysis of PC gaming just started to make less sense as I entered a post college stage in my life where I had less time to fiddle with and tweak things on my computer. First off, I prefer my Mac as my dominant computing interface, which means I need to have a separate gaming computer if I want to play basically anything. Second, I prefer playing most single player games on my 4K OLED TV, sitting on my couch with a controller in hand. Third, I have less tolerance for things that just don’t work regarding my …
I am fully convinced that the total breakdown of centralized social networking websites at every level is going to push us back to an online social architecture similar to the one which existed in the late 90’s / early to mid 2000’s. The failure of Twitter, Reddit, (looking further back) Facebook, and probably within the next few years, Discord, will all accelerate movement off centralized networking platforms into smaller more intimate ones. Reddit’s complete and total failure to monetize its users in a meaningful way turned into a complete disaster when its CEO had a temper tantrum online for the world to see because other developers made a product worth paying for off his platform. This in turn has made thousands of subreddits lock themselves as private, ensuring they can’t be discovered by anyone outside their community. I would be shocked if this sort of major user revolt didn’t happen to another major platform before end of year.
My theory: Web 2 was seen as the birthplace of the …
For the past few months I have spent a lot of time using the first wave of LLM products from OpenAI, Microsoft (disclaimer: is my employer, who my views here do not represent), and Google. My motivation for this twofold, first, that these are cool as hell. Ever since Alexa / the Google assistant, the dream of the Star Trek computer seemed in reach, and it’s obvious that LLM’s are the next step in the path towards being able to query machines using natural human language. Second, I have ADHD so the more digestible information is and the closer in temporal proximity it is to my desire to learn it, the easier it is for me to absorb. The rest I don’t have to justify as much, but I just wanted to jot some observations I have had down and see what the feedback from everyone is.
Additionally: I am writing this on an 11 inch iPad Pro, on airplane wifi, with 3.5 hours of sleep, a grande size Americano from the Starbucks in Newark Terminal B (the shittiest airport terminal in …
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft on Azure. Nothing I state here reflects any views my employer holds. These opinions are mine and mine alone, unless they’re also yours, in which case, hell yeah. Additionally, I am not an author. Grammar is going to be all over the place. Thanks.
Over the past few months my favorite place on the internet has been dying. You know why. An insurmountable amount of horrific decisions were made by its new owner who essentially determined himself the primary class of user to be catered to. He decided to crusade against bots on the site, an occurrence less frequent and annoying to me than the spam I receive in my email inbox. He allowed everyone to purchase a blue verification badge for 8 dollars without actually verifying their real identity (the previous point of the badge), devaluing the entire concept of the badge and ensuring that Tweets actually convey far less information than they ever used to. Last week he ultimately removed them from everyone who was …
Last year I decided to splurge on a bunch of technology that I figured would improve my work life. As someone who predominantly works from my home office, I am of the belief that an expensive purchase that greatly impacts my enjoyment of the way I spend many of my waking hours was worth it. I purchased two Studio Displays from Apple, and while I have my issues with them, they do exactly what I wanted them to do and I adore the sheer fidelity / color accuracy of the screens. I use them with my 16 inch MacBook Pro, with one plugged into each Thunderbolt 4 port and the actual laptop in a closed position.
Another device I purchased last year is a new 11 inch iPad Pro with a M2 SOC. Originally I was let down by the announcement of the M2 model, as my dominant use case of the iPad (outside of being an expensive chromebook / travel computer) is watching videos, so I was holding out for it to get the MicroLED display of its larger counterpart. However my old iPad Pro was the original “all …
Disclaimer: These thoughts are my own and not representative of my employer. These ramblings would have gone to a discord server i’m in but instead all of you get to see them. Lucky you! I didn’t edit or proofread this so expect it to sound like a long winded rant.
There’s this infamous concept called the end of history. it was proposed by Francis Fukuyama, and the main concept is that we have reached a point in human history in which we have gone through all major changes. Change would still happen of course but at a smaller rate. There would be no more walls falling, no further world wars. Regardless of how I personally feel about this concept in its original application (I am not a fan) I keep thinking about how it applies to the tech industry. I can’t stop myself from thinking that we’ve hit a similar point with computing. The revolutions of the personal computer, internet, and modern smartphone have had me wondering for years what the next evolution …
I have been obsessed with tech products my whole life, and I can’t imagine a world without them. Tech products are the first thing I think of when I wake up, and usually what I am thinking about when I fall asleep. My day job is my passion, and i’m so grateful to the world that this is something I get to spend the rest of my life thinking about and living in. That being said, I buy and consume a lot of tech stuff throughout the year. So I want to create a list of my favorite things that I was introduced to in 2022. From hardware, to software, to operating systems, to services, these are the products that made my year.
The Apple Studio Display
It’s sort of become a joke amongst my friends that I’m pretty obsessed with screens. I don’t know why this started. Probably during the pandemic, when I just blindly bought a TV and wondered why there was this white glow behind black text. I then looked at my phone and back to the cheap gaming monitors on my desk, and wondered why the color white …
I watch a lot of TV, mostly in the background while doing other things. Usually ill make a list of my favorite shows of the year and send it to my friends, but this year I have this blog, so I figured why not post it? Anyway, the rules are to be a “current year” show the first episode of that season / batch had to air in that year, so if episode 1 of a show premiers on December 31st 2022, it counts. I don’t count direct to streaming / tv films on here, so if you want my opinions on those, I’ve got a Letterboxd like every other zillenial struggling with their fading cultural relevance.
The List
1.) The Bear
Season 1, Hulu
The Bear came out of nowhere. My friend recommended I check out this show many times, but I didn’t listen until she sent me a tweet that compared it to Uncut Gems. It’s probably the most unique writing voice I heard in 2022 as far as television goes. It’s pretty par for the course to write a show about found family and belonging, but The Bear nails the mess …