Email Feature: Reply All "Discouraged"

In email,  I feel like we need a middle ground between:

1. The standard open distribution list, that tends to encourage the default behavior of Reply All;
2. The bcc technique that prevents this, but makes it impossible both to see who is copied, and to Reply All if it is indeed appropriate.

So the Reply-All-Discouraged feature I envision would operate as follows: 

1. Have to be consciously invoked. Perhaps even explicitly enabled in user settings.
2. Set explicitly on a per-email basis. Sender could optionally provide explanatory rationale for when Reply All might be appropriate.
3. When a recipient clicks Reply All, they would get a pop-up with a generic explanation of the feature, and any explanatory text from the Sender.

While making this work universally would require a formal or informal standards change, I think Gmail and Outlook have enough market share to implement independently, and get significant value out of it. For out-of-platform recipients, it would have to default to bcc. 

Brueggers Bagels Quality Control Opportunities

I love bagels, I eat one for breakfast 5 days a week (used to eat 2!). We don't have a lot of choices, Bruegger's is the best around. I mostly get Everything.

So I have been patronizing the local Bruegger's heavily for about 15 years. I buy a dozen, and freeze them for daily consumption, so I am in the store every couple of weeks. There are some significant consistency problems. Here is a sample bagel from this week:

Seed coverage very inconsistent. Sometimes it is heavy (ideal), sometimes very light (unacceptable), sometimes moderate (acceptable). In this case, the sample is the high side of moderate (less seedy underneath).

Done-ness is similarly inconsistent. I personally like my bagels on the browned side--this one is about perfect. They are often far lighter.

Handling. Bruegger's uses paper bags rather than cardboard boxes. They cram delicious, hot, fresh bagels into a small-ish bag, and they get mushed--the photo is a good example. There are easy solutions. One would be boxes, like Einstein's and Panera. The other would be much bigger bags.

Online ordering (bonus complaint). The mobile app does not allow you to create a custom dozen (and the website doesn't seem to support online ordering at all. To the credit of my local store, they are very good about actually answering the phone when I primo "3" in the IVR.

NYC Experimenting with Noise Pollution Enforcement Cameras

A small step in the right direction. I do not understand why US society tolerates such abusive, anti-social, unnecessary, deliberate noise pollution assault.

Beck and Call vs Beckon Call

I was well into my thirties before I learned that the correct expression is"beck and call", not "beckon call". In fact, the first time I encountered it, I assumed the writer (a business colleague) had made a sophomoric mistake.

In defense of my error, "beckon call" reminds me of other terms such as:

• borning cry
• siren song, swan song
• death rattle

Clearly the grammatically correct usage would be the gerund form, beckonING, as is the case with borning cry. But beckon is already a two-syllable word, and also a less-common word, which I would argue lends itself to a tendency to shorten, for metrical felicity.

My next example is "Siren song". This is not a perfect parallel example, since it does not involve a gerund, but illuminating in that it is an example of shortening for convenience (7.0M Google results for Siren, 1.4M for Siren's). Swan song is even more dramatic--"Swan's" yields very few matches.

My final example is "death rattle", which I see as being substantially parallel. "Dying rattle" barely registers in search numbers--though amusingly, the second hit is a brief poem that addresses the very point that death rattle is the more appealing phrase.

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So I think that is all a good argument that it is almost a sign of good linguistic judgment to assume "beckon call", if one has never seen the term in print. 

But the most compelling, in my mind, is the Occam's Razor take: "beck-and-call" sounds like a textbook example of the simplified, monosyllabic phonetic rendering that is the hallmark of a typical mondegreen(!)

Egg corn vs Mondegreen

I've long been a connoisseur of mondegreens. Only more recently have I become aware of a devilishly similar term, eggcorn. I just spent 15 minutes researching the compare-and-contrast, and I am not sure this is settled law. My quick take: Mondegreens completely alter the meaning of the phrase, while eggcorns keep it at least adjacent (chomping at the bit vs champing at the bit).

Some sources claim that mondegreens are distinguished by a nonsensical meaning, but I think that is a side-effect, not the main effect. I.e., very often the completely different meaning will be off-the-wall, but not always. In fact, the founding mondegreen changes the meaning substantially, but in an entirely sensible way.

Where Are the Smart Monitors?

 During daytime, I set my monitor to 100% brightness. At night, I dial it down to 70%. Why can't this be automated?

Stories are dangerous

I have a longstanding fixation on the downsides of the human love of a good story. This article totally nails it.

Stories act like an anaesthetic on our sceptical, questioning faculties. It can be valuable and pleasurable to subdue that part of our brain, and immerse ourselves in an imaginary world; I love reading stories, including non-fictional ones. But if you come across a history book, or a scientific study, or a news report, which tells a great story, or which slots neatly into a master-narrative in which you already believe, you should be more sceptical of its truth-value, not less. Narrative can give an illusion of solidity. When the expert narrative about the world changes, as with China (see below), we shouldn’t just conclude that the old narrative was false, but that all such narratives are unreliable.

Scientific Explanation for Dog's "Sixth Sense"

Over the years, I have read and heard many stories of dogs seemingly supernatural ability to sense when their master is coming home, or when the mail truck is on its way, etc. I believe there is some tendency among humans to treat this as a magical "sixth sense". Or to over-credit the sense of hearing: "dogs can differentiate the sound of their owner's car/school bus from 5 miles away"--I'm definitely calling bs on that one.

But as so often is the case, there is a known or posited scientific explanation. This article focuses on the time-decay of smell, in combination with other cues, as the explanation. E.g., the family children, in this case, arrive home from school on a school bus. The departure and arrival times of school buses are pretty predictable, I bet +- 5 minutes 95% of the time. The rate at which the children's scent decays is the main clue. This signals to the dog that arrival is imminent, prompting it to lurk in anticipation near the door.

The final part of the magic trick is delivered by the acute--but not magically powerful--sense of hearing. The dog lurks near the door, and they do hear the vehicle far sooner than any human would. They react in anticipation, completing the illusion that they have a magical superpower.

Encountering scientific explanations is ultimately much more rewarding than crediting far-fetched or magical explanations of phenomena.

Apple Should Sell A Viewclix Killer

Viewclix is a popular photo-frame device whose canonical use case is to allow family members to share photos with an older relative who is not up on technology. It also has secondary uses of push teleconferencing (you can initiate the teleconference remotely, without a tech-challenged elder having to do anything), and posting reminders to your loved one ("remember, we will pick you up today at 11:00 for lunch"). 

It does work okay, but the usability, for photos in particular, is very clunky. So clunky I found myself putting off updating the photo rotation, which was the main reason for getting the device. I have since confirmed a much better solution for updating the photo frame functionality: simply deploy a spare TV or monitor, equipped with Chromecast, as a remote Google photos sharing device. Just a few, simple steps:

1. Set up a shared album(s).
2. Invite other family members to be contributors or administrators (depending if you want to let other delete, as well as add, photos) to the shared album.
3. Set Ambient Mode on the Chromecast to show the shared album(s).

Voila!

In addition to the >> UX, you also get a WAY bigger, TV-size screen. However, the roll-your-own with Chromecast does not address the other use cases. Which is why I think this is a great product opportunity for Apple (or Google, or Microsoft, but especially for Apple).

This is probably not an Airpods or Watch-sized market, but it is surely in the millions, in the US alone. Plus it would have strategic value, in strengthening the overall Apple ecosystem value proposition.

Bagel Inflation

9 years ago, in 2014, I could get a dozen bagels at Bruegger's for $6.99. Today, I am paying 14.49, including the $1 tip that didn't used to exist (at least not for me, especially paying by card). So one could say that the price has doubled in less than a decade, which seems economically shocking.

But it is intellectual malpractice to compare prices across time without factoring in the CPI. Adjust for CPI, I was actually paying $9.03 Still, that is 60% excess inflation. Granted, that was using the $2 off per dozen they had every Wednesday, since discontinued. Ignoring that, we are down to 25% excess inflation. If we also remove the tip, down to 16% excess inflation. Still quite a bit, no matter how you slice it.

Decreased Family Size & Social Class Concentration

From a purely statistical point of view, smaller family sizes decrease the likelihood of having close relatives who fall into more economically disadvantaged status. For instance, in a middle-class family of 6 siblings, it is not hard to imagine that 1 or 2 might, for various reasons, wind up experiencing substantially lower standards of living. This might tend to create empathy in more well-off layers of society, since they have close experience of those in a less-advantaged economic class.

In a family of 2 siblings, the statistics are greatly reduced. Then on top of that, there is the generational wealth factor. A comfortable family will be able to deploy more resources to help prevent or assist a child who might be in danger of slipping economically.

Bigger batteries would be so worth it

The achilles heel in the lifecycle of a lot of rechargeable devices is battery life. Lithium Ion batteries diminish steadily, often in 3 years they are about half of what they were when new. For a lot of products, I think a reasonable solution would be just provision them with a bigger battery to start. Instead of making each generation of mobile phones a bit thinner, use that space for more battery.

I was a devoted user of the Jabra Elite 65t earbuds for 5 years. The main reason I replaced them was battery degradation. When they were new, battery life was good, not great. I use them in large part for conference calls, so maybe 4 hours, with the case providing about 8 more hours. So I could often get by charging them once mid-week. By the end, I had to charge them every day, and on heavy days, they needed a top-up.

The replacement Soundcore A40 are a decent upgrade, but not all that huge, for being a 5-years-later product. The one area they really shine, though, is battery life. Out of the box, they get 6-8 hours battery life, and the case has 4X charges (vs 2X for Jabra). They almost always last all week.

Like a Kindle, even when you get the low battery warning, you probably easily have a day left (including what's in the case). It's great, more than I really need. But the beautiful thing is, even if it degrades by a full 50%, it will still be very, very good!

Google Should Buy Tile

I have been a pretty hardcore user of Tile Trackers for 7 years. At this point, I even have one in my travel kit, to attach to rental car keys. All in all, they have worked pretty well. But finding things via crowd-sourced location (leveraging all the Tile users out there as an ad-hoc mesh) has been pretty hit-or-miss, the few times I have used it. Whereas the Apple Air tags have the opposite problem--they are very good at "phoning home" to report location, and that is causing a major privacy problem.

So when I thought to use a bluetooth tracker to monitor my luggage, the Apple Air Tag was the no-brainer choice, even if it is twice as expensive. The fact that its network includes not just other Air Tags, but also iPhones, gives it an overwhelming network scale advantage.

Which got me thinking--Google should buy Tile (or, should have bought). Overnight, it could match Apple's network coverage.

Eleminate charge fouls in basketball

I totally agree with this article, assuming that it does not literally advocate abolishing the very concept of a charging foul. Growing up playing basketball recreationally, and watching as a casual fan, I thought of charging as something usually pretty clear-cut and obvious, and therefore rare. When I got back into basketball fandom after a several decades absence, I was very surprised to see how charging works--the defender races the driving offensive player to a spot, and has their feet planted a tiny fraction of a second first. They thus establish position, putting their body on the line to draw the foul from the offensive player whose momentum is unavoidably carrying them toward the contested real estate.

The same test that has been applied to offensive players aggressively courting foul calls by unnaturally contorting their bodies mid-jump-shot should apply here: his is not a basketball move.

I would not buy a new ICE vehicle

At this point, no way would I buy a new ICE (regular gas-powered) vehicle. I personally am in a good phase in the car-replacement cycle, easily 4 years from wanting (longer from actually *needing*) to replace one of ours. But if I were otherwise ready for a new car, I would either put it off, or buy something (substantially) used. I think we are at the point where ICE is a very poor investment.

I do wonder if, a few years down the line, there will be havoc in the auto market, where nobody wants to buy ICE, but EVs are still a minority of production?

Chromecast vs Viewclix

Viewclix is a popular photo-frame device whose canonical use case is to allow family members to share photos with an older relative who is not up on technology. We got one for my mother about a year ago.

It does work okay, but the usability is clunky. I have found a much better solution is to use a spare TV or monitor, equipped with Chromecast, as a remote Google photos sharing device.

1. Set up a shared album.
2. Invite other family members to be contributors or administrators (depending if you want to let other delete, as well as add, photos) to the shared album.
3. Set Ambient Mode on the Chromecast to show the shared album.

Voila!

In addition to the >> UX, you also get a WAY bigger, TV-size screen.

(Granted, Viewclix has secondary use cases of teleconferencing, and posting reminders to your loved one. The Chromecast solution does not tackle those.)

Airline flight change offer

First time I have ever gotten this kind of offer to proactively re-schedule my flight, if I happen to find that convenient. If this is what I think it is, it is different than an offer to sign up to be "bumped". Those typically are on a bidding system--how much would you take in compensation to be bumped to a different flight?

If I am interpreting correctly, this is saying "hey, if you happen want to change your flight, we won't charge you for it. Do you want to take a look and see if a different flight would be an improvement?" I've thought for ages that airlines should do this kind of thing--see if there is a win-win to be had.

(I didn't pursue the offer, so I don't know for sure how it worked.)

Optional Handling of Canceled Events

Online calendar software such as Outlook and Google Calendar always removes canceled events, once you accept the cancelation notification. That's often reasonable and fine. But sometimes, especially for recurring events, it is helpful to see an explicit notice of the cancellation. E.g., I don't have to get to work early next Thursday, because the weekly coffee club isn't meeting.

It is a somewhat esoteric feature, and probably tricky to design the UI for, but it really could be nice, for some of my use cases. One way I can think of to implement it is for the calendar to ask you, when you accept the cancellation, whether to hard-delete or logical delete. And then it could include an option for "don't ask me this in the future".

EU USB-C Mandate: Compromise via a Sunset Provision

With the advent of USB-C, the device world has been approaching common-standard nirvana. To-date, Apple has remained the stubborn holdout ruining the fun. Maybe Apple would have cleaned up their act this year on their own, but it's hard to know, since the EU did it for them, with a 2024 mandate to standardize on USB-C.

Very few people, I think, disagree with the outcome of this particular regulation, but you do hear various degrees of concern about prescriptive mandates. I.e., maybe a company would innovate and produce a superior connector, better to let the market decide.

I think building a sunset provision into regulations like this would be a pragmatic compromise. E.g., let the regulation expire in 4 years. That leaves a reasonably foreseeable time horizon where USB-C is completely adequate, so by the time any hypothetical innovation is mature, the path will be clear for testing it in the market.

At the same time, the arrangement should remove any motivation to game the system. E.g., after switching to USB-C, Apple isn't likely to switch back when the regulation expires.

Podcast App Feature: Skip Intro/Outro

Some podcasts have annoyingly long intros, or ads at the beginning. Lots of podcasts are padded with ads at the end. Both are annoying. If you are in a position to fast-forward, they can easily be skipped, but if you tend to listen in "hands off" mode (driving, exercising, doing things that get your hands dirty like cooking), this isn't a good option. 

A killer feature for a podcatcher would be to allow, on a per-podcast basis, a user-configurable setting for skipping intro and outro.

Bluetooth Needs a (Don't) Connect Automatically Option

It has to be a common family scenario (in the car-centric US, anyway) for a couple to have 2 cars, with each paired to both spouses' iPhones. That's definitely the case in my household. And you know what happens? When one of us starts the car, while the other is connected to Bluetooth (Airpods, etc), the car instantly steals the connection. Super-annoying.

The solution seems so simple and obvious...Bluetooth needs an option, like wifi, where you can set whether to Connect Automatically, or not. Another approach would be a delayed connection. 

Optimized Baseball-Viewing

This past World Series, I perfected my baseball-viewing approach. Time is limited, baseball games just drag on too long. The obvious first, non-negotiable step to improved viewing, for all televised sports, is to watch on DVR. Skipping commercials, etc, cuts time drastically.

But modern baseball, more than the other big American sports, has long, boring stretches. Yes, if you are a really serious fan, maybe you want to watch each pitch of the prolonged, multi-pitcher duel. That's not me.

So what I do is leverage the YouTube TV "key plays" feature. I jump to the next key play. From there, I watch all the action. So if the key play is a double, then the next 3 batters are retired, that's what I see. So I do get plenty of the pitching drama, while saving a ton of time.

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The one thing I don't like is that the software tells you how many total key plays there are--especially as you progress toward the end of the game, that can be a spoiler. The world continues to be insufficiently attuned to spoiler-avoidance.

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I have no solution for futbol. If you took this approach, you would cut out 97% of the game. Futbol needs more scoring.

De Minimis Class Action - Make the Checks Worth Cashing

 I recently received this $3 check for my share of a class-action suit against Equifax. It is hardly worth the trouble it takes to cash it. Which I suspect is part of the whole, rotten, class-action game.

Here's a pro-consumer idea. Instead of sending 10 people a check for $3, have an internal lottery, and send 1 person a check for $30.

In other regulatory areas, there is the concept of a de minimis distribution amount. If the amount is so low that it is economically inefficient to distribute it to individuals, it goes instead to some alternative non-profit or regulatory recipient, with the idea that it will be put to good use, in alignment with remediation of the offense. I suppose, for all I know, that is what happens with un-cashed checks.

Order Body Parts Online and Save Big $$$

This is Part 1 of a two-parter. Part 1 lays out the facts of my consumer experience. Part 2 will have business commentary.

I hit a deer recently. Fatal for the deer, smashed up the passenger side of my front bumper cover. I have collision insurance coverage, so I filed a claim with my carrier, USAA. Because of the long wait at their preferred shop, I decided to use a local shop. I sent in photos, and USAA valued the repair at $1447. The local shop quoted me very nearly the same price (without knowing what the USAA estimate was).

However, they also told me that I could cut $1100 off the price if I could source my own bumper--e.g., find something used at a salvage yard. That's not the kind of thing you usually hear from a car repair place, but it certainly made a good impression. I think partly they are a good, honest, reputation-valuing local company, and partly the parts-finishing work is labor-intensive and tedious, and not their core value proposition, in this time of labor shortages. So they have to charge a lot for parts-finishing, and would be just as happy to forego that work.

I did some poking around the internet, and pretty quickly found MBI Auto. Reviews on their site were good, and there was also this very detailed this positive review of a prior MBI Auto customer, with many similar positive experiences by commenters. MBI's prices were absurdly low. $290, shipping included, if I was willing to let them ship the bumper folded, $450 not folded. I get why folded is cheaper (bumper covers are light but bulky), but while $450 is still a very good deal, that difference seems huge--I would have thought folding was worth maybe a ~$50 savings in shipping.

Anyway, I did some research, and it sounded like folded was a decent bet. Many people said it was 100% fine, worst case seemed like it would have a little crease and a crack in the paint. But seeing as this new bumper cover is going to be the shiniest part on an 8-year old vehicle, I wasn't after perfection at any cost. I know from prior experience that the key to affordable auto body repair is not going after perfection--85-98% perfect will often cost 1/3 as much as 100%.

The cover arrived super-fast, faster than promised, a mere 5 days from when I placed the order (the local shop would have taken longer!). It was carefully packed, and took some doing to unfold it (they include instructions). Leaving it in a warm, preferably sunny, room for a few days is part of the program.

No issues with the product quality. I even asked the local body shop if they thought the part was sub-standard in any way, and they said no, perfectly fine. So by sourcing from MBI Auto, I cut my parts cost from $1000 to $300. Quite a savings.