“ugh I know exactly why this is happening” is such a frustrating feeling. Especially when it’s stuff that should’ve been found in testing, or that you know probably was found in testing, but they deprioritized the fix.

All I see here is people tricking the government into putting in a nice little micropark.

Maybe. Depends on what they do with it. But assuming they have any power on this board at all, it’ll be better that they’re there than if they weren’t. It’s not like Linux Foundation “keeping their hands clean” is going to help anything other than optics.

More likely, it’s calculated. The Linux Foundation probably did the math and realized that they could either participate in it, or watch Google run it themselves, packing the board with sycophants and leaving it with no real oversight.

This way, there’s actually a trusted nonprofit voice in the room.

I’m currently mid-migration from Windows to Linux, so I have to wait until the Windows release or until I finish migrating (I’m not really up for building a beta at this point), but I’m very excited.

I’m keeping an eye on Zed: https://zed.dev/

Yeah, AI, whatever. It’s written in Rust and looks pretty great.

“You are not the customer, you are the product” is true so often, but in many cases (like this one) it doesn’t really apply.

First off, “not the customer but the product” is an inherently antagonistic relationship. Your goals are opposed to Facebook’s, for instance, because you want to spend less time on the platform and you want to interact with friends and not brands, but Facebook wants the opposite of both. But with HSA administration, your goals and your employer’s goals are aligned: you both want someone who will quickly and painlessly manage your account without being a pain.

Second, “not the customer but the product” implies an undisclosed, extractive payment occurring behind the scenes. TikTok is harvesting a great deal of data from you and selling it to other companies. You are the product in that your data has value. But with HSA administration, the product is just the management of your HSA money; there’s no under-the-table dealing going on here (or there shouldn’t be); they’re getting paid by your company for their services.

Third, “not the customer but the product” relationships are entirely one-way; you have no way to impact the providing company beyond just not using their services. They do not, will not, and at some level can never care about your experience beyond making it as minimally useful to you to keep you on the platform. But that HSA provider desperately needs your company’s business, so if enough of your coworkers raise a stink and get your company to complain, they will make a change.

In actuality, “not the customer but the product” ignores the unfortunate reality of most HR/payroll service companies in this case: they’re just the lowest bidder, contracted at the bottom dollar to provide the cheapest services possible, because your employers don’t have to use their services and don’t care about your experience.

At the very least, the USPS is getting money out of them. More than the 2¢, even.

There are of course the basics—limit blue light exposure, have a wind-down time, only use your bed for sleep, caffeine cutoff after #pm (some people say 5, some people say 3, I think this is entirely body-dependent). Melatonin supplements can also help. Soothing sounds, of course.

Beyond that, everyone is different.

I found that reading is useful (get an e-ink reader or a paper book to avoid screen distractions and blue light throwing your rhythms off).

I also found that not trying to sleep when I can’t is useful; when I’m laying in bed and can’t fall asleep, I go and do the dishes or read on the couch for a half hour, and then try again.

For me, turning the temperature down also helps. I let the house get down below 64° at night; saves me money (thermal battery effect in summer, less furnace usage in winter), and helps tell my body I should be in sleeping mode.

A few years ago, I also had a sleep study and discovered that I have sleep apnea. Now, the process of putting on the mask at night also helps get my body ready to sleep. That’s in addition to the better sleep quality and more infrequent wakeups.

Also, you might just be trying to sleep too early for your body’s natural rhythm. Maybe your work schedule doesn’t allow you to change that, but if you can, try pushing your bedtime back a little bit. Not everyone needs to sleep from 10-6; some people are just more naturally able to sleep from 12-8.

Good luck, and good night.

No, you’re seeing it from this side of it, so it’ll appear correctly. Think about if you had X-ray vision and could see through a stamp; viewed through the stamp, it would look like it was the right way around.

Complex stuff (talks, projects, brainstorming, etc): The notes get taken on paper. Some things stay there, because the act of writing them down is enough. Some things then move to my “second brain;” for personal stuff, that’s currently on Notion (I’m contemplating migrating it to Obsidian or something similar). For work stuff, that’s a Slack thread, or (if it’s really important) Confluence.

Todos go into Google Tasks. I used to use Todoist, but I got frustrated by how inflexible the notification system was.

Shopping lists (and a few other similar lists that need to be shared) go into Google Keep.

Oh, interesting! I stand corrected.

I always have more fun trying to answer the increasingly-non-sequitur "why"s (in increasing complexity) than they have asking them.

“Why is the sky blue?”

“Because the air is blue!”

“Why?”

“Because air molecules are so small that they get in the way of the blue light and bounce it around.”

“Why?”

“Because the other colors are big enough to get through.”

“Why?”

“Because the things we see as ‘colors’ are just different wavelengths of light.”

“Why?”

“Because it was evolutionarily advantageous for us to be able to distinguish between different objects by the wavelengths of light that they reflect.”

“Why?”

“Partially because things that reflect some wavelengths are dangerous to eat, and others are healthy to eat, and we wouldn’t know the difference based on the luminosity alone.”

“Why?”

“Presumably because ripening and decomposing food doesn’t undergo a visible physical change until long after it’s already unsafe, but it changes color very quickly.”

“Why?”

“Hmm. I think because the chemical processes that cause color changes and the chemical processes that accompany the growth of microorganisms tend to happen together.”

They always tap out from boredom long before I do, and it’s fun trying to figure out the super esoteric stuff. Besides, the "why"s are so unspecific that you can answer it for any part of the question.

“Can I borrow that VHS?”

20 years ago it would have been DVDs. But even before that, we didn’t call them "VHS"es. We called them tapes, or video tapes if we wanted to distinguish from audio tapes.

Good point. It’s really just a cheap key you have to have with you.

That’s one of the things Aldi brought with them when they came over to the US. I’ve always thought it was a pretty cool idea, though as inflation keeps going the 25-cent lock-in becomes less and less of a motivator. Maybe a good reminder, though.

The “I want to buy your house” things are a little bit different, because they’re usually not technically scams (though they are definitely predatory). If you work with them, you will probably receive money in exchange for your house. It’s just that your sale price is likely to be far, far below what you could’ve received by listing it yourself on the open market.

They’re exclusively targeting people who don’t know how much their property is worth. Usually people in transitioning neighborhoods who bought their home 40 years ago for $10k, who don’t know that their property alone is worth $200k today and will happily take $80k cash from some rando on the phone because they think the 800% return is a great deal.

I’ve lived in neighborhoods like that for a while. The phone calls we receive are insane; in our old house, which we knew was worth $300k because we had just had it appraised to put it on the market, the guy on the phone offered us $65k sight unseen. I was like, “if you even took the twelve seconds to look at this property on Street View you’d know why that is a laughable idea.”

Yeah, well, losing two console generations in a row will do that.

I’m a parent, and I don’t want special treatment. Some consideration would be nice, but honestly I just want every employee to be treated like adults.