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.