Published
Weekend Reading — 😷 Maskathon
This week we learn how to make DIY masks, brush up on COBOL, embrace for “The Great Unwinding”, stock up on bread makers, and top the box office.
Coronavirus has no race by visuals
😷🧵 Maskathon
This week, we summon the hacker spirit and do a Maskathon.
It was only last week, when we talked about why everyone should be wearing masks (if you're still not convinced).
Since then, a few more countries have changed their policies, either suggesting or mandating the use of masks in public places.
Except (especially here in the US), they don't have enough masks to give everyone. And besides, N95/surgical masks are disposable. They're not designed to be reused (but you can disinfect).
So this week, we're going to look at do-it-yourself masks.
julie_eigenmann Make a no-sew mask from bandana/handkerchief and hair ties. Easy to follow and takes a few minutes. For added protection, you can insert a HEPA filter between the layers.
Masks for Curbing the Spread of SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus Detailed and illustrated guide, courtesy of the government of India. Includes detailed instructions for sewing a mask that will fit like a surgical mask.
Etsy Feel like accessorizing? Etsy creators are selling masks in all shapes and patterns.
Lex Fridman “Air flow from a person breathing, talking, and coughing, with & without face mask. Visualization by @LaVisionInc”
The untold origin story of the N95 mask “The most important design object of our time was more than a century in the making.”
🏚 WFH
COVID–19 Resource Center Important! Guidance and tools to navigate changing regulation on benefits for the self employed.
Just a by the by: "private" messages sent to individual people during a Zoom meeting show up in the end-of-meeting transcript along with all other public messages.
Tell your friends, save a life.
mdowd 👿
Today’s quarantine lesson: if you “ok google” in a zoom meeting, you can mess with about three or four peoples houses at once
John M. Cunningham “The original Zoom meeting”
The light therapeutic I'm reposting this. For many of us, we're suddenly spending more time indoors and in front of computer screens. This article talks to researches about the affect daylight and screens have on our sleep patterns, and our physical and mental well beings. You might want to make some changes after you read this. I opened up all the curtains in my house, try to spend an hour outdoors every day, and dialed the computer's color temperature to warmer.
Assaf “Distancing”
Tools of the Trade
Steve Forde “Threw together a "Dad's on a call" indicator for downstairs. Made with an Adafruit Huzzah Esp8266 and controlled via Telegram bot.”
colors.lol “Overly descriptive color palettes.” Delightful color schemes, and I love the memorable random color names: give me some unsealed mahogany, undiagnosed light indigo, foggiest jungle green 😀
Dave DeLong “One of my absolute most favorite Safari features is right-clicking on the 🔈 icon in the address bar to pull videos (especially @YouTube vids) into a system PIP window.
This lets me continue watching a video while doing other things on my Mac.”
Designing web applications for the Apple Watch using Toucaan CSS Framework. There's no dedicated browser, but some Apple Watch applications can show web pages. With the help of CSS media queries, you can adapt content to fit the screen, and the eye to watch distance.
Lines of Code
Khalil Stemmler Write boring code:
Boring code:
- is consistent
- is not clever
- is easily understandable
- makes locating features easy
- adheres to Principle of Least Surprise (things do what I assume they would)
- takes a minimal amount of effort to change
- uses the right tool (paradigm, language) for the job
Jim Manico Remember Y2K? Well …
The governor of New Jersey just put out the call on live TV that he is desperate for Cobol programmers right now.
Peopleware
That Discomfort You’re Feeling Is Grief This:
Just as going to the airport is forever different from how it was before 9/11, things will change and this is the point at which they changed. The loss of normalcy; the fear of economic toll; the loss of connection. This is hitting us and we’re grieving. Collectively. We are not used to this kind of collective grief in the air.
If you don’t come out of this quarantine with either:
1.) a new skill
2.) starting what you’ve been putting off like a new business
3.) more knowledgeThat's perfectly fucking fine you're currently going through a historical event out of your control it's not a bank holiday
Startup Life
28 Moves to Survive (& Thrive) in a Downturn “In the face of a global pandemic and a financial meltdown, a new reality confronts Founders. Here are 28 moves to survive and thrive during a downturn.” 👍 If you're running a startup, read this!
Start-Ups Are Pummeled in the ‘Great Unwinding’ - The New York Times So we're calling it “The Great Unwinding“? 🤷
The VC & Founder Sentiment Survey Founders were always more optimistic than VCs, this survey shows that. More interesting to me is the sentiment difference between pre and post series A. 46% of pre-series A founders are considering/making layoffs, that jumps to 70% post series A. I guess experience brings caution (wisdom?) Also, younger is more nimble: 51% of pre-series A are going/considering remote work for the long term, but only 32% of post-series A!
Covid-19 Finance Assistance Network - Splash If you need help navigating through the economic challenges — including applying for PPP loans and other federal assistance — Lew’s List, High Plains Advisors, and Foundry Group have assembled a group of CFOs, controllers, and other finance professionals to help you. For free.
Today in Business Models
Why Walmart is seeing a rise in sales for tops, but not bottoms during the coronavirus crisis Second order effect from all the Zoom meetings.
Stackline’s News and Insights — Top 100 Fastest Growing & Declining Categories in E-commerce When all this is over, we'll have too many bread makes (+652%), cute hair colors (+115%), and next level ping pong skills (+89%). For now, we've given up on men's swimwear (-64%), drones (-50%), and sunglasses (-43%).
(For reference, toilet paper only up 190%?)
Serge van Ginderachter “Who led the digital transformation in your company?”
Locked Doors
Temporarily rolling back SameSite Cookie Changes and TLS 1.0/1.1 support has been removed Chrome and Firefox are rolling back planned security upgrades, for fear they would break essential health, government, and community services:
This is because many people are currently forced to work at home and relying on online tools amid the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, but some of critical government sites still don’t support TLS 1.2 yet.
Court: Violating a site’s terms of service isn’t criminal hacking Courts are struggling to interpret the vague Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. For now, they decided that website terms of service are nothing more than an advisory. I hope that sticks.
A Message to Our Users - Zoom Blog Good move on behalf of Zoom. They played fast and loose with security, and now are promising to take corrective action.
Boeing 787s must be turned off and on every 51 days to prevent ‘misleading data’ being shown to pilots Have you tried turning the plane on and off? Apparently, this is normal procedure for the Boeing 787 and Airbus A350.
Available For Hire
kyra Over two years of web development experience. C#, Java, python , C, React, Angular, HTML/CSS. Canada.
Monica.dev Full Stack engineer and community organizer of. NYC, DC or remote. https://www.aboutmonica.com
Ahmed Gurbuz Data Scientist/Engineer. Open to relocation. http://ahmedgurbuz.com
Stephen Lang Embedded software developer. Open-source preferred. Remote. https://skl.me
Alex Diwa Front-end/full-stack developer. https://alexdiwa.com/
Craig Pearlman Swift, Objective-C, PostgreSQL, Oracle, PHP, Laravel. http://craig.blackfog.net
Kari Halsted Tech writer, info architect, editor. Remote.
None of the Above
chris “everyone in April:”
Eric Lach True
sourdough starters are just Tamagotchi for early middle-age
Rex Chapman “The only demons under your bed...”
A work from home email:
Dear mom,
Per my last email, I would love a grilled cheese for lunch, at your earliest convenience. Please advise.
Best,
Gwynn Ballard
Manager of House Operations
relationships.txt “My (f26) boyfriend (m28) is visiting another girl's island a lot in animal crossing. Is this cheating?”
The entire US domestic box office receipts last weekend totaled less than $4,000.
$3,842 of that came from the indie film "Phoenix, Oregon."
Please no more indie filmmakers make "I wish my tiny movie would top the box office charts" wishes on monkey's paws okay??
Joseph Kim “My favorite physical distancing practice in South Korea is in Gwangju, where you don't sit next to people at local govt offices but next to cute dolls (on the seats it says we need physical distancing so we [children] can go to school by April 6th, source: Yonhap)”
Coronavirus: Why are there teddy bears in Bay Area windows? “Teddy bear hunts are popping up in neighborhoods around the Bay Area. Here’s why.”
Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man are stubbing out their smokes... to find a corona-cure Big Tobacco is working on a vaccine for Coronavirus. Nothing makes sense about 2020.
iucounu “this orangutan telling a thrilling story to an entranced audience of otters”
Why It’s So Freaking Hard To Make A Good COVID-19 Model Recommended reading.
out of context brooklyn nine nine Did … did the script writers know?
Andrew Stuart 👇 The goats are taking over the town! 🐐
I think I just got a group of goats in Llandudno arrested.
Let me explain... first, I saw this from inside a dark pub (the one I live in currently). I thought I was seeing things. So I took some video:
Jennifer Baer “Hi. I designed some coronavirus travel posters for you. Stay the F* home. Love you all.”
