Dark Patterns in Home Warranties

How is your knowledge of knots? Despite being an Eagle Scout, I would have to answer: very poor. While I’m confident that just about everyone knows the Overhand knot, the Reef knot (or Square knot), a shoelace knot (or more), and a Slip knot. As a Boy Scout, throw a Bowline into that mix. And yet, if I was tasked to tie a knot outside the context...

Introduction Back in 2013, Marc Scott wrote a great blog post: Kids can’t use computers…and this is why it should worry you. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it! In my opinion, Scott’s take was true in 2013, and even more true now, over a decade later. An arguably-too-brief summary of the post is: despite the...

Just ran into a scenario that reminded and motivated me to post a second “Hardware Highlight”. Once again, this falls squarely into the bucket of discovering that someone manufactures a little piece of (non-computer) hardware that just perfectly solves a particular problem, and it’s cheap! Once again, this is not an ad. If you’re like me, you’ve...

I subscribe to the idea that in many cases, people don’t need new laptops. In fact, in the spirit of refuse, reduce, reuse, repair, recycle as a means to help the world, one might argue that people not only don’t need new laptops, they shouldn’t get new laptops. I think this is particularly true in cases like mine, where most of my development...

Sometimes, you discover that someone manufactures a little piece of (non-computer) hardware that just perfectly solves a particular problem; plus, you can get for well less than $1. Today, I want to highlight one of my favorite examples of this type of discovery.