Micro.blog photo challenge 📷 day 7: park @dejus

Micro.blog photo challenge 📷 day 6: silhouette @otaviocc

Micro.blog photo challenge 📷 day 5: Earth @dfj

Knowledge Management: A Fool’s Errand?

CJ Eller – @cjeller on micro.blog – had a take on Personal Knowledge Management that resonated with me, in his articleGarbage Heap:

I’ve bounced off of personal knowledge management tools like crazy. Wikis? Digital gardens? Zettelkasten systems? Nothing sticks.

I’m a nerd, and I love the idea of capturing all the things I read, the information I learn, and being able to harvest it later for some great good.

I have tried all the software tools. Some stick more than others. Some of the time I end up knowing I have information, but not knowing which software silo I stuck it in. Am I getting value from these attempts at capturing everything I know? Probably not, at least most of the time.

To illustrate the point of being driven crazy by ‘knowledge’, Eller quotes a short story Funes, His Memory by Jorge Luis Borges:

Without the ability to generalize and abstract away his memories, Funes is left with a garbage heap that keeps piling up. “Funes, His Memory” is a story not of a gifted individual but a cursed one, trapped in an endless web of memories with no way out. A nightmare.

Is there a point to capturing every piece of information that passes us by? Probably not, but there is something enticing about the idea of being able to somehow extract ‘knowledge and wisdom’ from disparate sources of ‘information’.

I think that CJ has it right; it’s a fool’s errand.

Micro.blog photo challenge 📷 day 4: thorny @ronguest

Finished the first three episodes of Shining Girls on AppleTV+. That service is really delivering quality content; firing on all cylinders. Netflix could learn a thing or two. 📺

Micro.blog photo challenge 📷 day 3: experimental (my prompt!)

Knotwords is a fun game. It has that classic Zach Gage vibe to it.

Micro.blog photo challenge 📷 day 2: photo @agilelisa

Micro.blog photo challenge 📷 day 1: switch @ridwan

Hello @Burk - your username is capital. That’s odd.

Our One Prime Plus members have received their bonus episode! @hemisphericviews @martinfeld @burk

Is Discord the New Online Meeting Place?

With the probable demise of Twitter, it will join other social networks that have already met their demise (MySpace, Facebook, Instagram) with me, I am not that worried.

Micro.blog will remain my generalised blogging location, allowing me to post whatever I like (and optionally cross-post to Twitter if I feel I must).

What I’ve also found more recently is that Discord has become an unexpected surprise hit for focused communities. I only participate in four, and I wouldn’t want it to grow much beyond this, but they have each delivered an excellent place for virtual gathering, without anybody portraying negative behaviours, trying to sell NFTs, or undertake any other annoying actions that one sees elsewhere online.

My Discord communities are:

These Discord servers have a bonhomie that I don’t see on other social networks. They are private and fun. They embody the good spirits of the internet. I love them.

It’s great to see so many new (and returning) people posting to micro.blog following the Musk Twitter news. I hope they stay and build this great community.

Commentating NBL1 Perth Redbacks Games

This season I have taken the job as a commentator for the NBL1 West’s Perth Redbacks. The NBL1 is the league directly beneath the national NBL competition and is broken into State-based divisions. I had to miss the first couple of games due to COVID protocols, so last night was my first behind the microphone.

The games are streamed via the league’s website.

The direct links to the videos of the games I called last night are:

NBL1 - Perth Redbacks v Mandurah Magic Women

NBL1 - Perth Redbacks v Mandurah Magic Men

I had an absolute blast calling these games. While the home team didn’t get the win in either game, it was a lot of fun to call the action from the sideline.

I am already looking forward to the next game.

Thanks @jean and @manton and @burk - I love being a part of micro.blog!

Despite owning the PowerPack, I’ve switched away from Alfred and back to Launchbar.

I had to buy a subscription for Microsoft 365 today. That was an unexpected event. I appreciate the Home Use Program discount though.

A day of IT disaster. Firstly corporate IT decided to lock down all access from machines other than their own, then by the end of the day my iMac reached a point where a ‘nuke and pave’ installation was the only choice.

The Profit Paradox at play with the iPhone mini 14

The Looming Demise of the iPhone mini - MacSparky:

The part that gets me is that they really shouldn’t be forced to make a decision. Isn’t Apple selling enough iPhones that they could afford to sell small, medium, and large versions of the pro and non-pro phones? You’d think they could make that work, but, for whatever reason, they are choosing not to.

David Sparks take the customer-centric Apple question, but the answer is business-centric.

I’m an owner of an iPhone 13 mini who is also currently reading The Paradox of Profit by Jan Eeckhout. As well as being a fascinating book in general, it also provides an excellent framework to answer the question about why there won’t be an iPhone 14 mini, posed by MacSparky, despite the fact they could.

Apple is a company that has market power. A company with market power will produce less, in the interest of profit.

If Apple were to produce more iPhones (and the mini, specifically) it would result in lower profit margins. iPhone minis have been sold at a lower price than other iPhones. What incentive does Apple have to continue selling something that doesn’t boost their margin? Companies continue to be incentivised to deliver profit; not the best market outcomes. They also wear the cost burden of another manufacturing line to maintain, for little benefit to the business.

As much as we Apple fans like to deify Apple Inc., they remain a corporation with shareholders who look to quarterly earnings reports and admire the gross margin the company delivers, which flows through to the bottom line, and thus dividends.

Producing an iPhone 14 mini might please a few million customers, but the economic incentives at play are perverse. Therefore, they will not make an iPhone 14 mini, and be rewarded for this action with greater profit margins.

Apple has sufficient market power such that would-be buyers of iPhone minis will not depart the iPhone brand in favour of Android, or another option (which there really isn’t, which introduces a whole other problem of there being a platform duopoly). What the customer will do is buy a higher priced iPhone that delivers better margins to Apple.

Therefore, Apple will be rewarded for producing less, at higher prices.

I highly recommend The Paradox of Profit to others who have an interest in macroeconomic theory.