I was listening to a Plain English episode with Derick Thompson and the phrase that rang out is “Everything is Television”. He introduced the idea of the attention economy which connects directly to ‘using social media as a tool instead of it using you’. For example, have you ever been typing on your phone and you look up back up on the TV and go “uh oh, what did I miss?”. That’s one medium of attention winning over another.

I used to watch a lot of YouTube. It was approaching at some week to 50+ hours because I liked learning about new ideas and being quote ‘informed’. Do I still watch shows and movies? Of course, but they are now more of an intentional part of my life. Even when I got back on the platform of YouTube to find some information I do it with the proper guardrails such as restriction and self-awareness of an algorithm trying to steal my attention. After a few years of watching YouTube I started to realize my watching patterns were a problem. I was increasing become frustrated in not only what I was watching but also the content that was even being recommended. After so many “interesting” rabbit holes it became burdensome to stop watching but also easy enough to keep clicking to the next video. I kept having to watch more and more to satisfy the same need of entertainment.

hat was the “last” youtube video I ever watched?

This pattern of habit continued until a found a video called Operation Red Herring by EmpLemon. The video mainly went over the YouTube Adpocalypse. However, there was a very important side tangent about the decline of quality content and about how the videos you are watching now are objectively made with less creativity and more profit-based incentives. After this sentence, I felt like an alcoholic who suddenly realized they had a kid. The previous sentence could be perceived as hyperbole but let me try to phrase it in another way. “What if the only thing stopping you from something greater was yourself”.

How bad are algorithms exactly?

They are useful until they start to use you. I don’t have problem with search engines; I have a problem with biased curated content that leads to echo chambers. I don’t have a problem with shopping recommendations; I have a problem when they are used for cent-squeezing price discrimination.

So, the question is - are you going to keep letting algorithms use you?

Do not use a drain line adapter or check value for a reverse osmosis filter system. I did this for a few months and indirectly caused a health hazard because of dishwasher backflow. Propper locations for where to put the drain valve are linked - APEC Systems, General Electric

How this came come my radar: Will gravity be an issue for this dishwasher drain tube adapter? (connecting RO Water Filter Drainage to the garbage disposal / main drain) - Worried the dishwasher drain tube won’t drain all the way. : r/Plumbing

If you look at a “clean” code summary and pull out the rules that actually affect the structure of your code, you get

• Prefer polymorphism to “if/else” and “switch”
• Code should not know about the internals of objects it’s working with
• Functions should be small
• Functions should do one thing
• “DRY” - Don’t Repeat Yourself

So by violating the first rule of clean code — which is one of its central tenants — we are able to drop from 35 cycles per shape to 24 cycles per shape, impling that code following that rule number is 1.5x slower than code that doesn’t. To put that in in hardware terms, it would be like taking an iPhone 14 Pro Max and reducing it to an iPhone 11 Pro Max. It’s three or four years of hardware evolution erased because somebody said to use polymorphism instead of switch statements.

But we’re only just getting started.

“Clean” Code, Horrible Performance

My short impressions of each company. Top 10 Finalists for Startup World Cup Virginia 202

Crunchy Hydration (Megan Riggs) - likely to get acquired by coke or pepsi

EdLogics (Thomas M. Chamberlain) - I don’t get it as B2B solutions like this already exist.

SalesE (Jeana Bolanos) - Interesting AI application for sales, was impressed by the founders backround alone

Attorney Live (JJ Garofalo) - Beefed up ask.com

Ara Platform (Unable to Locate) - A wrapper for git

Avant Genomics (Rachelle Turiello) - Science + Tech

Luminoah (Neal Piper) - Science + Tech

NGZ AI (Mike Mcmahan) - Interesting AI application for healthcare

SurgicalEd VR (Dr. Lauren Siff) - Science + Tech

VroomBrick (Leland Remias) - The wildest presentation intro by far. As someone who’s had a real estate license for a long time at this point I see value in streamlining the consumer process