Arhiva: 2021

An interesting debate on Marginal Revolution. Of course, the debate is as old as humanity. Still, people in our generation had to really look at the arguments because of how COVID impacted different people based on age.

So the lives of high wealth, low human capital individuals, including older individuals, are overweighted by traditional economic metrics, given that “naive” WTP measures do not adjust for the “wealth transfer upon death” externality. That is some but by no means all of the elderly. Their willingness to pay for risk reduction may be as high as the WTP of the young, but in social terms that does not mean their lives are equally valuable.

From here: Are young or old lives worth more? – Marginal REVOLUTION.

I had lunch with a good friend today. In an almost full restaurant. It almost felt… “normal”.

It’s a really sunny day, which is amazing, especially since April had been really rainy. As it is usual in Portugal, apparently (“Avril, chuva mil”, they say here).

Our dog was uncharacteristically happy to see us when we picked him am from “dog school”.

Some things I work on are moving along and are looking good.

A good friend of mine just announced some great news.

It’s been a good day. And I felt the need to write this because there were so few of them lately.

8 years ago I was writing something similar, about a completely different situation, though.

The sunset in Nazaré, Portugal, yesterday.

If you’re ever in Lisbon and you want to enjoy a good coffee, in a nice environment, go to Nicolau. We went there at the recommendation of a friend (“good food!”), but also because it is dog friendly, so our Westie was welcome, as well.

And how could it not be, when Nicolau is the dog of the owner apparently, and he has his portrait on the wall in the middle of the café? Even more, he has an entire family: Amélia (his girlfriend/wife) and Basílio (his cousin). Of course, Amélia has a café, Basílio has one as well. And they’re all in walking distance of each other, so you can visit all of them.

If you find yourself at Nicolau, try the Banoffee Lovers Pancakes (see above). You’ll thank me later.

Photos from Nicolau’s website

I was just walking today through Lisbon. I was talking (in Romanian) to my fiancé, when someone stopped next to us and said “Hey, Bobby, is that you?”. In Romanian.

I looked at the guy asking me and it took me about 10 seconds to understand who was looking at me from behind the mask. Not because I didn’t know who he was, but because he wasn’t supposed to be in a random – touristy enough – place in Portugal.

After recognizing him and finding out he just moved here a week before, we took the time to have a drink together.

At some point he asked: “What do you think this serendipitous moment is telling us?”

An interesting question, but such an unexpected meeting nevertheless.

Featured photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

This hits really close to home, unfortunately.

“It might sound crazy, but I’d rather go to Twitter and check out a few people I trust than take guidance from the CDC, or WHO, or Fauci,” Baca, the Colorado truck driver, told me. Other no-vaxxers offered similar appraisals of various Democrats and liberals, but they were typically less printable.

From here: What Are No-Vaxxers Thinking? – The Atlantic.

And these are the people they follow on Twitter or Facebook:

Berenson’s TV appearances are more misdirection than outright fiction, and his Twitter feed blends internet-y irony and scientific jargon in a way that may obscure what he’s actually saying.
[…]
The current score in the competition between non-senior pandemic deaths and conclusive vaccine deaths is 100,000–0.

One hundred thousand to zero. That might be the most important statistic in this whole mess. Berenson doesn’t tweet blatantly falsifiable statements about the vaccines every day. For the most part, he peddles doubt, laced with confusing and expert-sounding jargon, which may seem compelling at first but can’t survive contact with expert opinion.

From here: Alex Berenson: The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man – The Atlantic.

Featured photo by Daniel Schludi on Unsplash

I’ve been adding some design elements to this site and I always forget what they were. I put them here just so I don’t always go back to research.

It’s nothing in particular, just the size of the post title font, the blockquote design and the shadow for the images on the site.

.entry-title {text-transform: none; font-size: 40px;}

blockquote {
margin: 20px;
padding: 20px;
background: #ffeeee;
font-weight: 500;
font-size: medium;
font-family: inherit;
font-style: inherit;
border-left:5px solid red;
}

cite {
font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold;
font-size: small;
}

.post img {
border:2px solid #C0C0C0;
box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
-moz-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
-webkit-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
-khtml-box-shadow: 5px 5px 5px #ccc;
}

Featured photo by Pankaj Patel on Unsplash

I love my iPad. I have an iPad Pro 10.5, the last one before the new design of the iPad Pro. I didn’t buy the new one since I didn’t feel like I need it, but I have to say the new M1 iPad Pro sounds really, really good.

But the problem I have with my iPad as a pro machine is the same as previously: even if the new iPad Pro has the same M1 processor in the MacBook Air I’m using now to write this article, the app I use to write (MarsEdit) isn’t available for iPad.

And this is a small issue. Apps like Photoshop or similar on iPad don’t have the full set of features the one on the desktop has. My fiancée owns an iPad Pro 12.9″ (the first that came with the new design) and she still needs to use her MacBOok Pro. Will this change with the new M1 iPad?

Is the future of iPad a problem of software and not of hardware anymore?

The difference in hardware between the 2020 iPad Pro and the 2021 iPad Pro isn’t a small jump, it’s a large leap over the chasm between the Mac and the iPad. That said, I can’t help but wonder what about the software?

These latest iPad Pros aren’t looking to be an improvement in the user experience for the next version of iPadOS 14, but instead it is looking at iPadOS 15 and beyond.

It is almost a given that Apple has another trick or two up its sleeve for the iPad this year. They showed their hand for the hardware in the new iPad Pros but they have yet to flourish what iPadOS 15 will bring.

From here: The iPad needs the software to catch up with its hardware – Tablet Habit.

During the past week I watched a NoClip documentary (6 parts) about the development and launch of Hades, the video game created by Supergiant Games.

I don’t normally play roguelike type games (Spelunky, FTL, Hollow Knight and the likes), but I really got interested in this roguelike game with a story behind it.

And I downloaded the game on Switch (I don’t really play on PC and it was the only console where it was available). It also sounded like it made a lot of sense for the Switch, since this type of games have, potentially, unlimited replayability, so a console like a Switch, that you can play anywhere, makes more sense.

That was at 10am in the morning on Saturday. I stopped playing at 6pm. I forced myself to stop, basically, because it was already 2-3 hours since I was saying: “OK, just one ore time”.

It’a really great experience and, if you didn’t play it and look for something that you can come back again and again, Hades is the game. For the moment it’s available on Steam, Epic and Switch.

Here’s the trailer:

Image from Supergiant games.

P.S.: I’m writing this late at night and I’m gonna play “one more time”. See you in the morning, for sure! :)

I was an early user on Twitter, on Facebook and a host of other early social networks. I still remember how fun it was in 2008-2009 on Twitter, how many fun conversation I had there.

But Twitter was never meant to stay like that. Once they started to get bigger, problems came along.

Almost every platform that attempts to be a safe place for a certain type of person falls flat on their face with this problem of scale. You can promise to be moderation free, or simply not have the time to do it, but the fact is it’s impossible to run a platform that doesn’t have to do moderation.

Start with the spam you’ll inevitably get once there are enough users. Then the things you legally have to take down — abuse, copyright material etc. Once you reach a critical mass of users, then comes the algorithmic feed decisions due to lack of engagement and inability for users to keep up. This too is an inevitability as users can’t decide if their posts will be seen or not and start to post less if action isn’t taken.

All platforms that need engagement or show adverts will devolve into the same state eventually. Nothing will ever ‘fix’ social media. Scale kills almost everything, there is a huge benifit to not being where everyone is. Stay small.

Quote from Greg Morris and you should read the rest of the article, to get the context.

This is one of the reasons I still have a personal blog, 17 years after starting one. Because it’s my own small space.

I didn’t know, but apparently the Formula 1 teams create posters for different Grand Prix races and, since this weekend is the Portuguese one, here are some of them.

Alfa Romeo:

Mercedes:

Ferrari:

via reddit