June 29, 2020 ā¢ #
This yearās UCI season was demolished due to COVID-19 like most other sports. All of the big monuments, classics, and at least 1 Grand Tour (Giro) were postponed. MilanāSan Remo, DauphinĆ©, ParisāRoubaix, and a bunch of others all happening in the fall, if at all this year.
Originally the Tour de France was in that bunch. It normally runs around the fourth of July and Bastille Day, but was pushed with the season nominally continuing in August. Now the UCI and race organizers decided to try something new, running the race in Zwift, a cycling fitness game with real tracks and worlds built in a VR-like environment:
The Virtual Tour de France starts on Saturday July 4, running across three consecutive weekends for a total of six stages. Over the course of the race, thereās a range of terrain from sprints to summit finishes, providing options for riders of all abilities.
Stages one and two are to be held on Zwiftās fictional island of Watopia, but with modifications to its appearance as a nod to Nice, the site of this yearās Grand DĆ©part.
Iām glad theyāre doing something to try and capture some of the cycling spirit during this hiatus period. Expectations are pretty low that itāll be that exciting, but as yet another forced experiment in virtualizing the world, weāll see what happens.
March 25, 2020 ā¢ #
This is a weird time.
The COVID-19 pandemic is the biggest global event thatās happened in my lifetime. It hasnāt impacted me personally that much (yet), but the financial and public health implications are clearly already disastrous, and bound to get worse.
Most concerning, though, is how little we know today about whatās in store for the rest of 2020 and beyond.
I donāt use this outlet to make predictions, and Iām generally not a fan of trying to call shots on uncertainties. But as an experiment, letās set down some open-ended questions to revisit in 6 months to see whatās different.
What will be different by mid-September?
Restaurants and bars
- Will the restaurant market return to how it was before? If it rebounds, how does the renewed landscape look different?
- Does the expansion of the food delivery market change the kinds of restaurants that open? Not all food types are equally compelling when jammed in a box. Does that influence whatās available?
- We were already Shipt customers before all of this for grocery delivery. Is COVID-19 the stressor that shifts more grocery business from brick-and-mortar to delivery?
Hotels
- Airbnb already impacted the hotel business over the last 10 years. But as we return to normal, what changes? Do people start putting extra priority on personal space?
- Airbnb has been, generally speaking, cheaper than traditional hotels over the years, but does this balance shift?
Airlines
- Seems like a fairly irreplaceable business, but does air travel return to pre-COVID level? Do people reduce non-essential travel?
Cruises
- Already an expendable industry, but not a small one ($45bn annually). After COVID, how does it ever return to normal
- Where would this spending go if it doesnāt? What form of recreation, travel, entertainment picks up that spending?
Businesses
- Businesses have gone dormant, people laid off, reduced hours, high unemployment. When things start to rebuild, what returns?
- For those of us that have gone to remote work with minimal disruption, how many companies return to an office full time?
- If even 20% of these remote-capable companies decide either āwe donāt need an officeā or āwe could downsize to a smaller one,ā what impact does it have on commercial real estate?
Schools
- Schools around the world closed pretty quickly, most moving to remote learning. Universities mostly have some infrastructure in place now for online coursework, even though most traditional ones are still in-person heavy. Given that there was already a trend (albeit small) toward distance learning in higher-ed, and assuming at least moderate success in moving to remote over the next several months, are colleges ever the same again?
- At elementary and high school levels, the move to remote Zoom-based classes seems shakier. Our daughter is still in pre-school, so we arenāt that impacted (plus the first week of this quarantine spanned spring break, with no school anyway). But Iāve heard from others mixed experiences with their kids trying to āhomeschoolā while they work from home. When do the kids return to a normal school life? Will it be back to normal by the fall and start of the 2020 school year?
Entertainment
- The feature film industry could be done-for. With theaters all closed for a while, what happens to them after? Will they re-open? And if so, how long does it take to reconstitute a business in which many will likely have permanently closed and laid off their staff?
- Film studios are now forced to release new movies online, jumping the theatrical release completely and dropping movies directly on iTunes for $20. What will these new āvirtual box officeā results look like compared to their predicted receipts if theyād been released traditionally? If the earnings are still attractively high, will this new release model be permanent?
- What happens to film and television production over the next 6 months? Do we end up with a lull in new content similar to the writers strike from 2007?
November 2, 2019 ā¢ #
Strasburg tipping his pitches almost ended the Natsā run:
He remembered the game Strasburg pitched in Arizona on August 3. The Diamondbacks pounded Strasburg for nine runs in less than five innings. The D-Backs knew what was coming. The Nationals broke down the tape and discovered Strasburg was tipping his pitches by the way he reached into his glove to grip the baseball near his waist, just before he raised his hands to the set position.
An annotated version of Mike Migurskiās workshop on RapiD and Disaster Maps from the NetHope Summit. Facebookās work on this stuff looks primed to change the way everyone is doing OpenStreetMap contribution.
Iāve never used TikTok, but itās been a fascination tech story to follow its insane growth over the last 8-12 months. With the current geopolitical climate and the fact that itās owned by Chinese owner ByteDance, it seemed like this CFIUS investigation was inevitable.
October 12, 2019 ā¢ #
An amazing feat:
On a misty Saturday morning in Vienna, on a course specially chosen for speed, in an athletic spectacle of historic proportions, Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya ran 26.2 miles in a once-inconceivable time of 1 hour 59 minutes 40 seconds.
An architectās manifesto on how teams can rethink the design of baseball stadiums:
Fans want to feel that the club has bought into them, and a bolder model of fan engagement could give them a real stake in the clubās success. One of the most promising recent trends in North American sports is the way soccer clubs are emulating their European counterparts by developing dedicated supportersā groups. These independent organizations drive enthusiasm and energy in the ballpark, and make sure seats stay filled.
Instead of just acknowledging and tolerating the supporter group model, weāre going to encourage and codify it in the parkās architecture by giving over control of entire sections of the ballpark to fans. Rather than design the seating sections and concourse as a finished product, weāll offer it up as a framework for fan-driven organizations to introduce their own visions.
Analysis of how media over-represents rare causes, and represents almost not at all the most common causes of death.
July 13, 2019 ā¢ #
This is an absolutely phenomenal project showcasing each of the major satellites in the Solar System. The full interactive maps of each one are incredible. It shows how much data weāve gathered about all of these bodies with imagery on each one and thoroughly mapped with place and feature names.
A cool piece of news here. We bought our house with Redfin and had a great experience with it, after using the website heavily during the house search process. Opendoor is also in the real estate space, but their core business is around buying up properties themselves, offering easy liquidity to homeowners needing a rapid sale. I like that Redfin sees the potential there. Hopefully itās a good fit for each business.
The study found that walking indoors or outdoors similarly boosted creative inspiration. The act of walking itself, and not the environment, was the main factor. Across the board, creativity levels were consistently and significantly higher for those walking compared to those sitting.
I definitely feel like many of my best ideas and possible problem solutions come to me while running. This research shows that the act of cardiovascular activity spurs something creatively that you donāt have while sitting.
June 19, 2019 ā¢ #
At the recent WWDC, Apple announced an overhaul to their Maps product, including millions of miles of fresh data from their vehicle fleet, along with a new Street View-like feature called āLook Aroundā. Even though itās exciting to see them invest in mapping, it seems like a bridge too far to ever catch the quality of Google Maps. Om Malik compares the relative positions between the two to that of Bing to Google in search. Apple is approaching Maps as an application first, when really maps are about data:
Why do I think Google Maps will continue to trump Apple despite the latterās fancy new graphics and features? Because when it comes to maps, the key metrics are navigation, real-time redirection, and traffic information. Googleās Waze is a powerful weapon against all rivals. It has allowed Google to train its mapping algorithms to become highly effective and personal (not to mention how much intelligence that might have been shared with Waymo).
I would add point of interest data to this list as a key metric. That used to be purchased from commercial providers, scraped from the internet, and mapped manually, but now the fleet of vehicles (and Googleās users searching for places) provide a continuous stream of validation and updates to place data. With the combination of Google Maps, the Android OS, and soon a fleet of autonomous Waymo vehicles, it seems like Google will continue to be an unstoppable data juggernaut.
June 5, 2019 ā¢ #
Iāve written here before about my enjoyment of working on the iPad Pro. Even with the excitement around Appleās launch of the new Mac Pro this week, my favorite announcement was their āspecializationā of iOS in the new iPadOS.
Running down the best features:
- Denser screen real estate ā Anyone that uses an iPad for work lots of different apps is familiar with this gripe. The giant screen with a sparse scattering of tiny icons looks sort of ridiculous. That plus the addition of the anchorable Today Widget view on the left will both be massive improvements in speed.
- Multitasking improvements ā I havenāt been a huge user of the Slide Over app capability, but the extension of that to support multiple app switching with a swipe looks awesome. And Split View with multiple documents in a single app is something Iāve always wanted.
- Pencil ā Reducing latency and adding a slick Markup toolset as part of PencilKit for other apps. I use the Pencil every day, so this is just icing.
- More keyboard shortcuts ā Iām a keyboarder; I hunt down and get to know the shortcuts for any apps I use. Already on iPad I use cmd-tab to switch apps, cmd-space (Spotlight) to launch apps, cmd-tab and cmd-W to open and close browser tabs, and probably more I donāt even realize. I hope what theyāve added to Safari leads to more conventions being adopted across other apps.
- Mouse support? ā This looks like it might be weird, but Iām real curious to try it out.
The improvements to Safari and Files arenāt too exciting because I donāt use either right now, but itās still positive to see Apple put energy into iPad as a platform for real work. MacStories has a good roundup of details with everything included in the first version.
Calling it a completely different OS is inappropriate, at least at this stage. I hope that itās just the tip of the iceberg with desktop-class optimizations for the larger screen.
February 28, 2019 ā¢ #
This piece from Barry Ritholtz does a good job breaking down the real background behind the Amazon NYC HQ issues, how they were attracted and why they bailed:
The heart of the opposition to Amazon was how much the city and state bent the existing rules to offer a very generous package. The arguments are pretty clear: On the one side, net net the deal works to the cityās benefit, and $3 billion is not all that much.
The other side is less pragmatic and more philosophical. It is the same issue I have with taxpayers subsidizing Football stadiums. GBYOFS and stop asking taxpayers to subsidize your businesses and/or hobbies. The gaming of the safety net by Walmart and McDonalds to push their labor costs onto taxpayers. I railed against in during the financial crisis, and afterwards. Same with the Foxconn debacle ā yet another example of corporate overreach combined with an ill equipped governor who got rolled. The taxpayers threw him out of office soon after.
What bothers me about the response to this fiasco is that both sides are complicit in the undesirable behavior: Amazon shouldnāt need to twist municipal authorities for benefits (nor should stadium-builders or anyone else), but those in the government are the ones responsible for caving and writing the beneficial legislation.
When any one company gets special treatment, its own sets of rules, taxes, incentives, kickbacks, etc., when specific rules apply only to some but not to all, well, that is much better described as Crony Capitalism.
The reactionary response that Amazon is an āevil corporationā thatās run by mean billionaires lets a lot of others off the hook for their own bad behavior. Relatedly, the latest EconTalk episode had Duke economist Michael Munger talking about this exact issue.
November 1, 2018 ā¢ #
The heyday of RSS is long behind us. Ever since the shutdown of Google Reader in 2013, the crown of feed-based content consumption has been taken by Twitter. Thereās something about the heavily personalized nature of RSS that keeps me using it consistently, though, at least as often as I go to Twitter these days.
The way I have always used RSS, I tend to subscribe to ātrickleā feeds ā blogs of individual writers or smaller publications that donāt suffer from the compulsion to post 20 times a day. Thereās a calmness with using RSS feeds that you never get on Twitter. A combination of longer-form writing and the lack of endless retweeting and amplification of the same things keeps the peace when catching up on the latest updates.
Since the sting of the free Google Reader getting sunset unexpectedly, Iāve been paying for Feedbin as my reader of choice, with Reeder on iOS for mobile use. Iāve been very happy with both.
With how many blogs have moved to Medium now (at least in my universe), itās a good thing that theyāre still supporting the RSS standard.
RSS has waned in popularity the last few years, but if you want to keep it in your life, there are plenty of excellent content producers still enthusiastically supporting it.